RFID Helps Reduce Risk of Inventory Theft

If you run a large organization, then you know that equipment loss and theft are inevitable. Especially when assets are highly mobile or have a high probability to be stolen.

Years ago, I worked for a college textbook company. Initially, I worked in the warehouse as a clerk picking customer orders. Each day, the manager reflected on our performance, singled out those who picked the most orders and where we stood in terms of year-to-year totals. The last topic was always very interesting to me: the number of items that came up missing or misplaced. Obviously, this cost a pretty penny as it added up.

The company employed manual inventory tracking methods; they also employed many college students to pick, pack and ship those orders. I think you get the drift: Books are highly mobile and, since the company's work force was comprised of such a key demographic, they were flying off the shelves - only bound (sorry for the awful pun) for the wrong destinations.

The company needed to put an RFID system in place (not to mention more careful screening of applicants) to combat theft, as well as prevent misplacing assets. That eats up time as well as money.

Now imagine if we're talking about IT equipment, instead of books. Wouldn't you rather have all those laptops, servers, smartphones and tablets accounted for and quickly locatable? While the college textbook industry is a highly profitable business with expensive assets (to put it nicely), it doesn't compare. For example, if a laptop goes missing, you'd be out the cost of the computer and, even worse, at risk for data theft and unauthorized network access.

Use Info-Tech's "RFID ROI Calculator" in the IT Downloads library to compare the costs of manual inventory and equipment loss against the costs of implementing RFID. This Excel-based calculator helps you:

Document the costs of adding RFID.

Calculate the ROI of adding RFID to existing IT asset management systems.